I'm a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. PGP key here.
These days, I'm a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling -- a Cliff's Notes version of law school.
In the past, I've been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation.
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Facebook Wants Me To Pay $49 To Promote A Post. Not Going To Happen.

When Facebook first started rolling out the opportunity for users to pay to “promote” their news to their friends, they limited it to those with fewer than 5,000 connections and put a price tag of approximately $7 on the marketing enhanced visibility. If you paid up, you had an improved chance of popping up in your friends’ crowded news feeds. Judging from the opportunity they offered to me today, they’re now rolling out the feature to those with more connections. (I have around 1,200 friends on Facebook and, bizarrely, over 152,000 subscribers.)

When I posted a link today to the Facebook Politics Page showing that people on Facebook are talking more about Sandy than about Romney or Obama, Facebook asked me if I wanted to promote the “important post.” I was curious how much that would cost me. Answer: $49.

There are many other places I'd prefer to spend this $49.

Sorry, Facebook. Not going to happen. My account is a blend of personal and professional, and I certainly do post Forbes articles there that I hope my friends and subscribers will read, but I’ve always let that happen organically and don’t plan to change that practice. In fact, I’m having a hard time thinking of anything I’d post to Facebook that I’d pay a nice dinner’s worth to promote… Perhaps a plea for donations to the Kashmir-wants-to-spend-the-year-hiking-through-the-wilderness fund.

In an informal poll of my Facebook friends when this feature was first launched, just one (of those that saw the post) said she was willing to pay to get a post greater visibility. She was paying the cheaper $7 rate and wanted to encourage people to attend a play she was putting on. “Pretty cheap marketing,” she says by Facebook message. “I do wonder for how long and how prominently it reaches whom.”

I’m very curious whether Facebook will keep this promotion feature in place. By commoditizing friendships, Facebook may taint the social networking experience. ‘Promoting’ yourself to your friends isn’t super appealing, nor is the idea that no one will see what you post unless you pony up.

Brand users too have been grumbling about the perception that Facebook is hiding their posts from followers in order to try to get them to pay for promotion. Many of those with Facebook fan pages have noticed recently that their posts are not being seen by as many eyes despite an increase in their number of fans. Casey Johnson at Ars Technica asks whether Facebook is “broken on purpose” to sell promoted posts. She makes a compelling argument. Facebook, meanwhile, says it’s just filtering to prevent users’ news feeds from filling up with commercial posts (unless they pay to be there).

“[W]e did not change news feed so we could charge to promote posts,” says a Facebook spokesperson by email. “A few times a year we perform quality checks on the news feed algorithm to ensure high-quality and relevant posts. Based on a recent quality check, we made an adjustment to the news feed algorithm to respond to the negative feedback signals of spam and people hiding posts. Current signals show the adjustment has been successful – median reach of Pages has remained the same, while spam complaints and stories hidden by users have fallen significantly.”

Obviously Facebook needs to come up with creative ways to bring in money, but it runs a serious risk of alienating users if they get the impression that the site is rigged against them unless they pay up. Meanwhile, Google+ remains completely free.

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Facebook needs to concentrate on one thing at a time with advertising instead of trying to eat the birthday cake in one sitting; they’ll end up biting off more than they can chew!

They are trying to elbow in on information by allowing people to interface with personal email through their site (which links up to the IP and gives them access to anyone using other sites), as well as charging for people seeing what we have to say. My question is, if I don’t pay, is anyone even seeing my posts? And as quickly as information shifts down on a page, it’s like an extended version of Twitter.

Frankly, keeping up with the Facebook updates and clear on the security (breach), etc., it’s really becoming quite a headache for not even knowing if anyone sees your posts.

You know what they say, “Money talks and b******t walks,” so there you have it! It’s clear that Facebook is planning on running–right into a wall, due to lack of planning and greediness.

Facebook is treading on thin ice here and risks a significant backlash if the perception is that one must “pay to play” on the Facebook network. Reminds me of the other end of the spectrum where faux reputation management firms post publicly available police booking mug shots on the web and then market a service to have the photos removed. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/08/mugshots/

Facebook has its uses , One being that it can be used as a universal log in for a multitude of websites , or to be reminded of birthdays , But its a horrible place to use as a blog , and express ones thoughts !

I think that if you want to keep people in the know then use a combination of Twitter , and Tumblr ,

The rate appears to be a flat $7 for my friends with “normal” Facebook accounts. I’m curious what the pricing scale is for others like me who have a normal amount of friends but a high number of subscribers.

I’m running a fashion page with about 42,000 fans. In the beginning the price to promote a photo used to be $7 and I had 5000 fans. after few months it went upto $12 with fans 11,000, then $20 and now its freaking $39 with 42,000 fans. this is completely bizarre. I can’t pay that much for promoting a single photo. do you know what’s the reason for rising cost? Do you think there is any solution for this? Will appreciate your reply.

I am a fan of facebook and given everything the company (LoL) comps out, I don’t really have an issue with the practice at all. That being said, it’s been mentioned here today that the promotional fee to post a Forbes article to a large amount of people is 49+ dollars.

Does the article not belong to Forbes ? If so how much is Forbes getting from the 49+ dollars ? If royalties are being paid, then whats the problem?

FB as we know it is over. It will malinger for many years, but the high-water mark of its influence has passed. This is about what kind of niche it can fill for the long term years to come. I doubt we see FB achieve any lasting success while boss Hoodie remains in charge. He is no Steve Jobs, not even Bill Gates. He’s just the richest example of a kid that made a website and had connections at the right time. Somebody was going to be it, and he is. Nothing wrong in that, wish I had the cash he did. But let us not deify him as something he isn’t. When you get past the fixation on bulk users, FB starts to look like a grossly underachieving company with below average leadership and no vision. They are riding on their hype based laurels.